Brian Axsmith, a paleobotanist at the University of South Alabama who discovered many significant fossils in the southeastern United States, died May 5 from complications associated with COVID-19. He was 57.
Axsmith was born in Stowe, PA, and raised in suburban Philadelphia. His sister Doreen Axsmith Inmon tells FOX10 he had a love of dinosaurs and paleontology from an early age. In an email to The Scientist, Timothy Sherman, a biologist at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, says Axsmith specifically became interested in Mesozoic plant fossils after finding them near his hometown in the Newark Basin when he was an undergraduate student.
Axsmith received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Millersville University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate in botany from the University of Kansas in 1998. Following postdoctoral training at the same institution, Axsmith took a job at the University of South Alabama in Mobile in 1999, where ...
